HeyJaredFrontier of Ink and Dust
The art and writing of Brent Partner — on the endless dance between beauty and decay.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 6
- Latest publication
- Sep 20, 2026
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- Jul 13, 2026
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How Not to Strangle the Work (opens the original)
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PrefaceFor a while now, I have been stealing from visual art theory to think about writing.Concepts like composition, values, focal points, shape design, negative space, and the movement of the eye across an image have all seemed unexpectedly useful when applied to fiction. They have helped me think about scenes less as bundles of information and more as arranged experience, less as content than as guided attention.This time I wanted to try the opposite.John Steinbeck’s six rules for writing are
What Remains After the Shadows (opens the original)
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Approaching the RimDammit, that show did it again. I’ve just finished Babylon 5 once more, something I’ve seen so many times, and still those final two episodes kick me in the guts. I know exactly what’s coming, from Sheridan’s White Star turning back toward the station and Lochley saluting him from C&C, to the station finally breaking apart in light. None of it surprises me, but it makes no difference. Every time, my chest tightens, my throat catches, and eventually the tears well.That’s really
Midkemia, Revisited (opens the original)
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PrefaceEvery now and then I go back to a book I loved when I was younger, mostly to see if it’s still any bloody good. Truth be told, it’s more than now and then. I’m a serial fiction recidivist, a habitual re-reader, a print-on-paper junkie of books that have had some sort of effect on me.Memory can do strange things to a story you think you know. Go back to it as an adult and the world has shifted on you. The same people are there, doing the same things, but now you notice all the stuff that s
The Reader Is the Point (opens the original)
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PrefaceThis is a slightly different kind of piece for me.Most of what I talk about tends to come from the position of a mere adept at the temple. I usually prefer to ask questions rather than plant flags. I am more comfortable circling a subject, worrying at it, and trying to understand it from different angles than I am declaring a position outright. This may be the first article I have penned that leans more into editorial opinion than inquiry.I have held my silence on this topic for a long ti
What a Landscape Painter Might Know About Writing (opens the original)
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PrefaceEdgar Payne was an American landscape painter, known for big outdoor scenes, mountain country, and a practical seriousness about why pictures work. That is part of why his manual Composition of Outdoor Painting still holds up over one hundred years later. Because what he gave us was not just a technical manual. What he produced was a book about arrangement, judgement, feeling, and the deeper laws beneath good art.Even by reading the first chapter, “The Approach to Art,” the book feels big
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